On Behavior and Toxicity on AtWar

As many of you know already from reading Dave's introduction to the community (Read Here if you missed it), there were 3 general areas he wanted to address. One of these was ending the toxicity in the forums.

The Mod Team has spent the last week or so discussing what exactly this would look like, and specifically clarifying what constitutes 'toxicity'. I think most of us already have a sense of what that is, but it can be hard to pin down. Therefore, we will be going forward with the following definitions:

What it is: The 'daily grind' of negative and dismissive comments, as well as mundane, repetitive hostilities and ethnic slurs will be curbed so that our forums will no longer have that dark, unwelcoming feel that new players often get when they first log on to AtWar forums.

What it is not: David made clear to the Mods he does not want us to be censors. A well placed joke is not going to result in a ban or mod intervention.

The AtWar Rules will not be changing, but will be re-enforced by us as a team going forward. Thank you all for your patience, and we look forward to seeing you all in game!

Yes there are some toxic people, but these mods are being a dick also, banning people and muting people for the most stupid things, "oh i hate you, fuck you", does not proceed to further comment, *BAN BAN BAN, like really?, why are these mods so soft

I understand the worry about censorship as much as the next guy, but we really couldn't ask for a more reasonable and transparent explanation of what the goal here is. Dave has made so many assurances that this is not a "pc" thing, not about punishing fun, and non-ideological. We can still have our open (even depraved) AW culture with reasonable limitations on what's appropriate in public channels. There's always been restrictions, even in the wildest beta days, so the needle is just moving a bit. And of course: enforcement is never 100% perfect, but that goes for any flexible rules.

Tl;dr: I urge those even with legitimate reservations to remain open minded!

You wouldn't go into a restaurant and start yelling "NIGGER" or "JEW" to everyone you see. Yet that's exactly what some people do here on atWar every day. Just this morning I logged in and some idiot was copy & pasting "NIGGER" into the chat, in all caps, over and over again. Now you tell me, if a brand new player signs up for our game and that's the first thing he/she sees, what are the chances they'll actually stay around? Not great. (Unless they are okay with that kind of behavior, in which case we just get more of the same around here.)

i saw a video of a guy doing that on youtube also reported for toxicity lollz